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KABUL, Afghanistan — International military officials are investigating two episodes that
appeared to be U.S.-led actions in which as many as 11 Afghan civilians might have been killed.

In the more-lethal episode, Afghan officials said, 10 civilians were killed in Kunar province in
eastern Afghanistan in a village where two known Taliban commanders were visiting family
members.

“Ten civilians were killed last night in a joint Afghan and American operation that took place
in Chogam Valley in Shigal district,” said Fazullah Wahidi, the provincial governor.

He said four women, one man and five children between the ages of 8 and 13 were killed; four
teenagers were wounded, three of whom were girls.

Increasingly over the past two years, foreign insurgents, sometimes with links to al-Qaida and
other non-Afghan groups, have taken refuge in Kunar and neighboring Nuristan province. Both
provinces have a long border with Pakistan, and insurgents can hide easily in the rugged and
forested mountain terrain.

Wahidi said the target of the Kunar operation was a Taliban leader named Shahpour, “a known and
really dangerous Afghan Taliban commander with links to al-Qaida operatives in Kunar” and another
Taliban commander, known as “Rocketi,” a Pakistani citizen from the Northwest Frontier province.
Both men were killed in the attack.

Wahidi said the operation was not coordinated with Afghan security forces, but that locally
hired Afghan paramilitaries were involved in the raid, which included an airstrike and a ground
operation. Sometimes U.S. government agencies other than the military use special commandos.

Maj. Adam Wojack, a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force, said it had no
information on the operation but was “aware of the reports” of civilian deaths and looking into
it.

Local officials in Kunar said that Shahpour was thought to have links to al-Qaida and narrowly
escaped being killed last year when the Americans attacked another al-Qaida-linked Taliban
commander known as Abu Hafez Al-Najde, who also went by the name Commander Ghani. Shahpour was the
Taliban leader in charge of nearby Dangam district but was visiting relatives at the time of the
raid.

People from Chogam, who brought injured people from the remote village where the attack took
place to the main hospital in the provincial capital of Asadabad, described a precise but damaging
hit on two adjacent houses.

“Two homes were totally destroyed; air power was used during the operation,” said a man who
brought a boy with cuts to the hospital for treatment but refused to give his name. “There are
still dead bodies under the rubble and human flesh scattered in the area.”

The other episode in which an Afghan civilian was killed by foreign troops occurred on Tuesday
during daylight hours.

It took place as NATO-led forces were checking a stretch of heavily traveled highway between
Kandahar and Spin Boldak for explosives during a road-clearance mission and shot at an oncoming car
that did not stop when signaled to do so, Wojack said.

An Afghan policeman, Taj Mohammed, the local border police commander, corroborated much of the
assistance-force account but did not see the shooting. He said the car was carrying people from a
wedding party.

Wojack said that the forces had followed standard procedure of signaling to the car to stop.
After the driver stopped, he then started to accelerate toward the convoy, at which point a soldier
shot at the car, Wojack said.